World War Two
Published 27 Jul 2024China, Britain, and the US issue a Declaration demanding Japan’s unconditional surrender, and promising complete destruction if this does not happen and happen soon. The plan is to for the Americans to use their atomic bombs on Japan if she does not comply, but by the end of the week the Japanese have not replied. They still have hopes for the Soviets to mediate some sort sort of peace. What they don’t have is a navy, as its final destruction comes this week.
00:00 Intro
00:50 Recap
01:32 The Potsdam Conference
04:41 Japanese Hopes
05:56 The Potsdam Declaration
10:53 The Initial Reaction
14:48 The End Of The Japanese Navy
15:05 The War On Land
19:10 Summary
19:30 Conclusion
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July 28, 2024
Allies Issue Potsdam Declaration – WW2 – Week 309 – July 27, 1945
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July 24, 2024
Chieftain V T-62 | Operation Nasr, Iran – Iraq War, 1981
The Tank Museum
Published Apr 13, 2024Two tanks designed to fight each other in Northern Europe would face each other during the Iran-Iraq war in 1981. On one side, the British built Chieftain MBT. On the other, the Soviet-built T-62.
In this video, we examine what happened during Operation Nasr to find out which tank came out on top …
00:00 | Intro
01:19 | Meet the Tanks
02:15 | The T-62
03:26 | The Chieftain
06:21 | From Paper to the Battlefield
09:25 | The Outcome and Findings
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July 23, 2024
Claim – “Everybody wants Gaza’s gas”
Tim Worstall explains why the popular idea that it’s demand for the natural gas reserves that sit under Palestine that is driving much of the situation in the Middle East is utter codswallop:
“Oil Platform in the Santa Barbara Channel, California” by Ken Lund is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
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So we’ve a big thing about how all this fighting in Gaza is really about fossil fuels. @JamesMelville seems to think it’s true:
“Everybody wants Gaza’s gas.”
Oil and gas reserves – that’s the real proxy war in the Middle East.
This video provides a really succinct summary of the situation.
This “really succinct” summary includes the idea that the invasion of Iraq was all about access to that country’s oil. Which is very silly indeed. Before the war people paid Iraq for the oil. During the war people paid Iraq for the oil. After the war people are paying Iraq for the oil. The war hasn’t changed Iraq’s oil price — the global oil price has changed it, but not the war — and so the effect of the war upon access to Iraq’s oil has been, well, it’s been zero.
No, it’s not possible to then go off and say that Iraq wouldn’t sell to Americans and that’s why or anything like that. The US didn’t buy much Middle East oil anyway — mainly West African instead. But more than that, this is idiocy about how commodity markets work.
This is something we can test with a more recent example. So, there are sanctions on Russian oil these days over Ukraine. Western Europe, the US, doesn’t buy Russian oil. Russia is still exporting about what it used to. Because it’s a commodity, oil is.
What’s happening is that the Russian oil that used to come to Europe now goes to — say — India. And the Far East, or Middle East, whatever, oil that used to go to India now comes to Europe (the US is now a net exporter itself). Because that’s what happens with commodities. The very name, commodity, means they are substitutable. So, if one particular source cannot sell to one particular user then there’s a bit of a reshuffle. The same oil gets produced, the same oil gets consumed, it’s just the consumption has been moved around a bit and is now by different people. The net effect of sanctions on Russian oil has been, more or less, to increase the profits of those who run oil tankers. Ho Hum.
We’re also treated to the revelation that the US wants everyone to use liquefied natural gas because the US is the big exporter of LNG (well, it’s one). Therefore the US insists that Israel must develop the LNG fields off Gaza. Which is insane. If you’re an exporter you don’t want to start insisting on the start up of your own competition. The US demanding that the LNG not be produced at all would make logical sense but that’s not how conspirazoid ignorance works, is it? It has to be both a conspiracy and also a ludicrous one.
And a third claim. That this natural gas off Gaza is really worth $500 billion. That’s half a trillion dollars. We’ve looked at this value of gas off Gaza claim before and it’s tittery. $4 billion (that’s four billion, not five hundred billion) might be a reasonable claim and that’s just not enough to go to war over.
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July 22, 2024
Chinese Type 50 PPSh: Founding “Gun City” in Manchuria
Forgotten Weapons
Published Apr 12, 2024One of the first new weapons adopted and used by the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army after the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war was the Type 50, a copy of the Soviet PPSh-41. The story of its manufacture begins at the Japanese-occupied Mukden Arsenal. It was briefly occupied by the Soviets in 1945 before coming under control of the CCP. It was a huge manufacturing complex at the time, making artillery, small arms, ammunition, and more. A Nationalist bombing raid in 1949 led to the production being distributed among three separate smaller facilities, and the small remote town of Bei’an was chosen to become the new small arms factory site.
The town became so heavily focused on weapons manufacture that it gained the nickname of “Gun City”. The factory was formally named #626, and given the cover name of Qinghua Tool Company. It initially began with production of the Type 38 Arisaka, Type 24 Mauser (the Chiang Kai Shek rifle), the M1 Carbine (a failed project), and the Type 50 copy of the PPSh. In the spring of 1951 in response to UN advances northward in Korea, production was ordered to scale up on the Type 50, to 7500-9000 per month. This took a couple of months to achieve, but in June 1951 the first large shipment of the guns left the factory, and by December 1953 a total of 358,000 had been made. At that point, production shifted to the Type 54, a copy of the PPS-43.
The Type 50 is a close copy of the Russian Shpagin, but differs in a couple of details. The Chinese used a rear aperture sight, and the sights were placed slightly farther forward than on Russian guns. They are also generally very well made — better than most Russia wartime examples.
For many more cool small arms stories, check out WWII After WWII:
https://wwiiafterwwii.wordpress.com
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July 21, 2024
The Atomic Age Begins! – WW2 – Week 308 – July 20, 1945
World War Two
Published 20 Jul 2024This week the Americans explode a nuclear bomb at the Trinity Test in New Mexico. The plan is to possibly use more such bombs against targets in Japan. US President Harry Truman is meanwhile in Germany for the Potsdam Conference with other Allied leaders to hammer out some details of the postwar global order. The active war continues, of course, in Burma, Borneo, the Philippines, and China, with the Japanese being defeated everywhere.
00:00 Intro
00:22 Recap
00:51 The Trinity Test
02:46 The Potsdam Conference Begins
04:09 Bretton Woods Agreement
05:38 The Active War Continues
09:39 Summary
11:00 Conclusion
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July 10, 2024
Two World Wars: Finnish C96 “Ukko-Mauser”
Forgotten Weapons
Published Mar 27, 2024A decent number of C96 Mauser pistols were present in Finland’s civil war, many of them coming into the country with the Finnish Jaegers, and others from a variety of sources, commercial and Russian. They were used by both the Reds and the Whites, and in both 9x19mm and 7.63x25mm. After the end of the civil war, when the military was standardizing, the C96s were handed over to the Civil Guard, where they generally remained until recalled to army inventories in 1939. They once again saw service in the Winter War and Continuation War, and went into military stores afterwards until eventually being surplussed as obsolete.
One of the interesting aspects of Finnish C96s is that many of them come from the so-called “Scandinavian Contract” batch (for which no contract has actually turned up). These appear to be guns made in 7.63mm that were numbered as part of the early production in the Prussian “Red 9” series, probably for delivery to specific German units or partner forces during World War One.
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July 3, 2024
Tanks! – Allied tanks of WW2 – Sabaton History 127
Sabaton History
Published Mar 14, 2024Sabaton has written several songs about tanks — the boys are tank CRAZY! Songs like “Ghost Division” or “Panzerkampf” are about the German panzers and even the Soviet ones, but what about those of the Western Allies? Were they any good? And if so, how did they lose the Battle of France?
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June 28, 2024
Japan Decides on Peace – Are They Too Late? – War Against Humanity 137
World War Two
Published 27 Jun 2024The US bombers continue destroying Japanese cities with a rain of firebombs. As the country burns, the Japanese leadership and Emperor Hirohito finally realise they must seek peace.
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Why the iconic RPG-7 is a weapon of choice for soldiers and militias
Forces News
Published Mar 15, 2024The RPG-7 has been used by armies, insurgents and terrorist organisations from all over the world, and has been produced more than nine million times.
The rocket-propelled grenade launcher can be used against a variety of targets, including armoured vehicles, fortified and sheltered positions, helicopters and infantry.
“Even the most basic RPG-7 round from the ’60s will penetrate the minimum of 26cm of rolled homogenous armour, which is your basic tank armour,” said Jonathan Ferguson, the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.
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June 26, 2024
The Korean War Begins – Week 1 – June 25, 1950
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 25 Jun 2024Despite the fact that there have been clear signs that they might soon invade South Korea, when the North actually does in force on June 25th, 1950, it comes as a complete shock to the world. But is this a full invasion, or just cross border raids such as there were in 1949? And is there something more behind this? Stalin’s Soviets? Mao’s Chinese? And how will the world react? Find out this week as our week by week coverage of the war begins!
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June 25, 2024
“Nigel Farage’s sin […] was to tell the truth which our rulers and their bought, sycophantic media are desperate to hide from us”
As the British general election rumbles into its final days, most media outlets reacted very strongly to Nigel Farage’s willingness to break with the narrative over the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war:
Nigel Farage has really got the elites and their prostitute mainstream media panicking, this time by being the only politician who dares tell the truth about the origins of the Russia-Ukraine war.
First let me stress that I am not condoning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But Putin has made it very clear for at least the last 15 years that he saw Ukraine and Georgia, which both have long borders with Russia, joining Nato as an existential threat to his country and warned “not an inch eastwards”.
The West arrogantly ignored Putin’s warnings. That was dumb.
At a conference in April 2008, where Putin was invited to address Nato leaders, he warned that inviting Ukraine and Georgia to join Nato, and thus parking Nato troops and missiles directly on Russia’s borders, would be seen as an existential threat to Russia’s security. This was even reported in the BBC’s in-house rag, the Guardian, on April 4 2008: “The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, today repeated his warning that Moscow would view any attempt to expand Nato to its borders as a ‘direct threat'”.
In December 2021, Putin yet again warned the West that allowing Ukraine and Georgia to join Nato would be unacceptable, in the first minute of this three-minute video. In this video Putin (sensibly in my opinion) asks whether the US would allow Russian troops and missiles to be positioned along its borders with Canada or Mexico and reiterates his “not an inch eastwards” threat.
Yet in January 2022, the US presented its written response to Russian demands on Ukraine not joining Nato and on Nato troops being withdrawn from Romania and Bulgaria, but made clear that it did not change Washington’s support for Ukraine’s right to pursue Nato membership, the most contentious issue in relations with Moscow.
The reply, which was delivered to the Russian Foreign Ministry by the US ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, repeated the US offer to negotiate with Russia over some aspects of European security, but the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said the issue of eventual Ukrainian membership of the alliance was one of principle.
Blinken was speaking hours after his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, threatened “retaliatory measures” if the US response did not satisfy the Kremlin.
“Without going to the specifics of the document, I can tell you that it reiterates what we said publicly for many weeks, and in a sense for many, many years. That we will uphold the principle of Nato’s open door”, Blinken said, adding: “There is no change. There will be no change.”
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June 23, 2024
Okinawa Ends – WW2 – Week 304 – June 22, 1945
World War Two
Published 22 Jun 2024Mitsuru Ushijima’s forces are defeated and the Battle of Okinawa is officially over. However, since most of the Japanese fought to the death, victory comes at a bloody cost – over 50,000 US casualties and over 100,000 Japanese and also possibly that many Okinawan deaths. The fight on North Borneo continues, there’s a raid on Wake Island, and the Japanese powers that be meet to actually discuss making some sort of peace with the Allies.
00:00 Intro
01:25 Truman And The Interim Committee
05:00 Battle Of Okinawa
08:06 The End Of Okinawa
13:22 Raid On Wake Island
14:23 Battle Of North Borneo
15:33 Hirohito Wants Peace
16:54 Conclusion
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June 22, 2024
The Curious Case of Hitler’s Corpse – War Against Humanity 136
World War Two
Published 21 Jun 2024Joseph Stalin claims that Adolf Hitler managed to escape Berlin and is now living somewhere in hiding. It’s complete nonsense of course. But it raises some interesting questions. What remains do we have of Hitler? How do we know they belong to the Fuhrer? And, why is Stalin spreading these far-fetched lies?
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June 19, 2024
Soviet America in decay
At The Free Press, Niall Ferguson invites us to consider that America, not China, has taken the place of the Soviet Union in the post-Soviet world:
The witty phrase “late Soviet America” was coined by the Princeton historian Harold James back in 2020. It has only become more apposite since then as the cold war we’re in — the second one — heats up.
I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. In articles for The New York Times and National Review, I tried to show how the People’s Republic of China now occupies the space vacated by the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991.
This view is less controversial now than it was then. China is clearly not only an ideological rival, firmly committed to Marxism-Leninism and one-party rule. It’s also a technological competitor — the only one the U.S. confronts in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It’s a military rival, with a navy that is already larger than ours and a nuclear arsenal that is catching up fast. And it’s a geopolitical rival, asserting itself not only in the Indo-Pacific but also through proxies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we — and not the Chinese — might be the Soviets. It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: “Are we the baddies?”
I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day — perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?
Yes, I know what you are going to say.
There is a world of difference between the dysfunctional planned economy that Stalin built and bequeathed his heirs, which collapsed as soon as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform it, and the dynamic market economy that we Americans take pride in.
The Soviet system squandered resources and all but guaranteed shortages of consumer goods. The Soviet healthcare system was crippled by dilapidated hospitals and chronic shortages of equipment. There was grinding poverty, hunger, and child labor.
In America today, such conditions exist only in the bottom quintile of the economic distribution — though the extent to which they do exist is truly appalling. Infant mortality in the late Soviet Union was around 25 per 1,000. The figure for the U.S. in 2021 was 5.4, but for single mothers in the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia it is 13 per 1,000.
The comparison to the Soviet Union, you might argue, is nevertheless risible.
Take a closer look.
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Nazi Werwolves: Post War Terror – War Against Humanity 135
World War Two
Published 18 Jun 2024The guns are silent in Germany but the Allied Forces continue to suffer a flurry of bombings, assassinations, and shootings. Who is to blame? Well, the press suspects the Nazi Werwolves – terroristic bands of men, women, and children determined to carry on Hitler’s war. But just how serious is this violence really, and how many of the attackers are true believing Nazi fanatics?
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